


The Other Side of the Door

by Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)



Category: Boston Legal
Genre: Challenge Response, Community: zombi_fic_ation, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/pseuds/Blackbird%20Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For once, Alan is glad that Denny is always heavily armed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side of the Door

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zombie Fest 2013 (check out [](http://zombi-fic-ation.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://zombi-fic-ation.livejournal.com/)**zombi_fic_ation** on LJ)
> 
> Many thanks to my husband for the beta.

* * *

 

Alan shivers behind the door. It's only a matter of time before he's captured. He thinks – which he realizes is likely to be fleeting, now – of how much he loves his brain. For all the word salad, near-lethal sleepwalking and romantic trouble it's brought him, it's a good brain. It's quick (usually) and agile (except when he's petrified), and it's brought him money and success. And Denny. It brought him Denny. And there is nothing – nobody – that he's going to miss more than Denny. Except maybe arguing. He'll miss arguing a lot.

The moan from the door across the room wafts in a noisome stench. Alan can smell the grey-greenness of the flesh he knows is hanging off of what's left of Brad. Brad Chase – the man who ate Denny Crane.

Alan blinks back the prickling in his eyes at the memory of Denny's best tie – bloodied and covered in grey-green gore and tooth marks. _At least he put up a fight,_ Alan thinks, knowing he doesn't have the guts to follow in his late husband's footsteps. Not that he'll have any guts at all, for long, which is puzzling: Since when did zombies eat things other than brains? And why had they eaten every last scrap of Denny? And so fast?

There is a new moan from behind Zombie-Brad, and Alan's heart plummets. Nothing, not even un-death, could ever prevent him from recognizing Shirley's voice. _I'm glad Denny didn't live to see this,_ he thinks.

He also thinks how much he hates Brad. He's always hated him. The fact that Brad came to haunt Crane, Espenson, Schmidt and Shore in his undead state would seem like a natural progression in rottenness, except that Brad had always been so full of _life_. Then again, eating Denny would have given him Mad Cow, and that makes Alan smile even as he hears the stentorian growl identifying the walking remains of Carl Sack.

It's Catherine Piper who puts him over the edge. "Alan," she croons. "Come on out, dear, we know where you are."

 _No, you don't,_ he thinks, probably louder than he should.

"Yes, we do, dear." The testiness in Catherine's voice reveals her rotting, but only just.

Alan is struck by how little her voice has changed, and wonders if she was always—

"Bernie, he's in the inner office. Just climb up and get him, would you?"

Bernie? _I thought you killed Bernie._

It came out of his mouth – an unfortunate thing, all on its own – as, "I thought you bottled salamander!"

"Oh, no, Alan. Bottling salamander is cruel and makes them taste awful. Now, just sit tight; Bernie's coming to get you. And yes, I did kill him – sort of."

"But he's a—" Alan swallows. "Zombie...?"

"Of course he is, dear; I infected him."

"Oh, God...."

"Oh, come on, Alan; it's not as bad as you think—"

"It's worse," croaks Shirley.

"Shirley, dear, remember what we said about talking at this stage."

"'This stage'...?" Alan wonders if this degree of curiosity mightn't be related to his word salad problem.

"Yes. The newly changed have vocal troubles for quite some time after infection. But if you don't try to make actual words, it goes away and you can pass for live."

There is a hellish groan from outside the window behind Alan.

He doesn't turn around, because the idea of Bernie Ferrion crawling up the side of a building to eat him is bad enough without having to see any part of it happening.

"Bernie, just remember to share him," Catherine says. "You don't want to be a greedy-guts, like Brad...."

"Brad—"

"Ate Denny all by himself. He was supposed to share him with all of us."

Brad moans. It sounds like a protest.

Alan almost wants to see him, but he's too comfortable hiding behind the huge ipe wood door. "Hard and thick enough to stop a bullet," Denny had said, "and the bugs hate it."

Hard and thick ... Alan can't bear to think of that now, not when Denny's gone and he's facing the zombie horde.

"Open the door, Alan." Catherine's voice is stern, now. "We're going to eat you or infect you, no matter what. If you come out voluntarily, we'll let you choose."

"And if I don't?"

"It's cocktail time. My little army is peckish. Nothing like nibbling slowly on a screaming hors d'oeuvre...."

Alan shudders. "How do I know you'll keep your word and let me choose?"

Catherine laughs. "You don't, dear!" Never has 'dear' sounded so opposite to its meaning.

Alan thinks of all the things he'll never do again, or even for the first time: smoking a cigar and sipping scotch while discussing the day with Denny on the balcony, dancing with Denny, hugging Denny, kissing Denny, arguing a case – well, if Catherine's right about the voice thing and passing for live, he might be able to do that. Having sex – "Can you have sex when you're ... undead?"

"I suppose so, if you're careful." Catherine's shudder is obvious in her voice.

"But you can argue...."

"Alan, just open the fucking door!"

Alan blinks in surprise at Catherine's invective. But maybe, if he lets them transform him, he'll be able to sue her when he gets his voice back. "Sorry. Okay, I'm opening it now...." He hears the doors to the balcony opening, and slow, plodding footsteps approaching him. He refuses to turn around as he starts to unlock the door.

"Bernie, dear, make sure that Alan makes it out here in one piece, would you?"

Alan keeps working, focusing on the sleek, dark wood of the door – ethically sourced, he remembers. He feels a smile creeping into his lips at the irony of that thought as he opens the door and feels an unexpectedly heavy hand on his shoulder, pushing him down.

"Not Bernie. Denny Crane."

Alan crashes to the floor, covering his ears in the deafening roar of gunfire. He feels himself being dragged up and toward the balcony as his captor throws something into the outer office. And then he hears a helicopter.

"Keep your eyes closed and hang onto me!"

The voice is impossible. It has to be a figment of his imagination.

But the stocky body to which he's clinging with all four limbs is impossibly familiar, and the scent is unmistakable. And this is the best excuse he'll ever have to bury his face in Denny Crane's neck and breathe him in. He pointedly does NOT think about the fact that he's in mid-air, dangling from a cord to which only Denny is attached, and being pulled into an aircraft that depends on a single, giant hex-nut to keep it in the air.

The worst part, the part where he feels more afraid of anything than he ever has in his life, is when the chopper crew must pry him away from Denny so they can be seated.

When he's strapped in, he opens his eyes in time to see Denny making the whirly go-sign that he's seen on TV, and nearly faints at the sight of a face he never thought he'd see again. "What—" he swallows his dry-mouthed trembling. "What happened to all your guns?"

Denny jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the building they'd just left. "Too heavy to take on board." He hands Alan a pair of earplugs before donning his own.

"But – you came with them, right? I mean, by helicopter?" Alan puts the plugs in his ears.

Denny sits, stone-faced. "It was a choice between them and you."

"Sounds like it was a near thing—"

At that moment, there is a vast explosion and a ball of flame that makes Alan all but leap out of his seat.

"Don't make me regret my choice," Denny says.

Alan realizes how badly he's shaking when Denny wraps his arms around him. "I think I'm going to miss those guns...." And then he pulls away, abruptly. "Brad didn't infect you, did he?"

"Nah! I shot him seventeen times. Slowed him down enough so I could take the express elevator down after I planted my tie. I'm going to miss that tie...."

"I'll get you another one." Alan insists to himself that those aren't tears streaming down his face.

Denny pulls Alan in again. "Make it a good one."

*****

Sitting out on the terrace with Denny is one of Alan's favorite things to do on a June evening. But tonight, all he can think of is loss. The bomb that Denny had thrown had killed the zombies without destroying the building. The extermination squad had swept the building afterwards and cut off any heads that remained attached to their bodies and painstakingly catalogued DNA and dentition for positive identification. Catherine Piper and Bernie Ferrion were declared well and truly dead, but so were Clarence, Carl, Brad, Denise and Shirley.

"I miss her."

Alan, fingers laced through Denny's, relishes the pulse he feels between them. "So do I," he murmurs. "But not as much as you."

"You mean, you don't miss Shirley as much as I do, or you don't miss her as much as you missed me?"

Alan's hand tightens without permission on Denny's. "Both," he says, though he hadn't realized the truth of it so fully. "I thought Brad had eaten you."

"I ought to wash your brain out with soap for that." But Denny squeezes Alan's hand, instead.

Alan laughs, slightly. "Perhaps." He looks away, then. "I love you, Denny."

"You say that like it's something I don't know."

"You may not know _how_ I love you. And maybe we should keep it that way." Alan smiles, giving Denny's hand a reassuring squeeze, and starts to pull away.

Denny doesn't let him go. "I feel your erection against me in the morning."

Alan can't figure out whether to blush or turn pale. "I'm sorry, Denny. I—"

"It makes me hard."

The timbre of Denny's voice goes straight to Alan's groin.

"Kind of like now." Denny looks at him.

"Oh, God...."

"And when we kiss." Denny slips an arm around him.

"We have been kissing a fair bit, lately." Alan lets himself tilt into Denny's embrace.

"You kiss very well...." It's heated sex against Alan's mouth.

"So do you...."

In all of Alan's wildest imaginings, he'd never dreamed that the first time he and Denny got naked and writhed together – if that ever even happened – would be on the couch swing on their terrace. Shirley had given it to them as a first anniversary present. Their first kiss had been on it, as a joke for the party. Both had made a show of pulling away and spitting, but in catching each other's eyes, they were unmasked.

As Alan pulls off his clothes and watches Denny strip, he wonders why it has taken them three hundred and sixty-four more days to do this. The closest they've come is when they had a girl between them and were doing double entry. Feeling Denny's hard dick through her walls made him come harder than he ever had, but moving with and against Denny with nothing in the way is a whole different category of stimulation.

Denny is fitter now than he's been in a while. The diet and exercise regimen has slimmed and toned him a bit more than Alan expected. And his sexual appetite is focused, predatory in a way that makes Alan hungry for him.

It's nearly over when Denny first touches Alan's cock, but he manages to hold it together long enough to devour Denny's mouth and line up their erections and grasp them together. He expects Denny to come quickly, but when that doesn't happen, he starts to worry that he won't be able to hold out.

"Let go," Denny growls against his ear.

Alan doesn't know whether Denny means him to let go of their dicks, or to just let go and come when he wants. He does both.

Denny follows soon afterwards, and they hold on to each other, panting into semi-sleep.

"Get off," Denny grunts, after a little while.

"Huh?"

"Get off. I have to pee."

"Oh!"

Alan sits up and gets his bearings before following Denny into the house. He heads for the bathroom in his own, little-used bedroom in order to give them both some space. He hopes that Denny won't insist that he go to a hotel for the night. He hasn't done that often, but this – what just happened – is not a normal event in their lives.

He turns on the shower and steps in, washing off the day's cataclysms and preparing himself for the worst.

"Mind if I join you?"

Alan's head turns sharply, but his feet remain sensibly attached to the shower floor. "Be my guest."

Denny enters and gets under the same shower head as Alan, hugging him from behind. "Thank you," he says, dropping a kiss on Alan's shoulder.

Alan folds his arms around Denny's, leaning back into the embrace. "Thank you," he says.

Denny turns Alan's face gently toward his own, and they are kissing, soft and slow, and it's the only thing in the world that matters. 


End file.
